About

Amourshipping refers to the romantic pairing of the characters Ash Ketchum and Serena from the animated Pokémon television shows Pokémon the Series: XY and Pokémon the Series: XY&Z.

Origin

On September 12th, 2013, a discussion thread for shipping Ash Ketchum and Serena was created on the Serebii Forums,^[10] which collected fanarts, fanfiction and other media related to the romantic pairing.

Spread

In September 2014, the Amourshipping Blog^[6] was launched on Tumblr, featuring screen captured images and fan arts of Ash Ketchum and Serena. On April 28th, 2015, the Ash + Serena = Amourshipping Couple Facebook^[2] page was launched, accumulating upwards of 69,600 likes in two years. On August 11th, YouTuber YouYou PikaChU uploaded an anime music video montage titled "Ash X Serena Kiss – Amourshipping (shown below, left). On May 15th, YouTuber Aros uploaded a similar music video, featuring scenes of the Pokemon characters with a remix of the 2013 pop rock song "Counting Stars" by OneRepublic playing in the background (shown below, right). Over the next 15 months, the videos gained over 4.9 million and 1.5 million views respectively.

On May 21st, YouTuber 64man100 uploaded a slideshow of amourshipping fan arts (shown below, left). On November 15th, a page for AmourShipping was created on the Pokemon Shipping Wiki.^[1] On November 24th, YouTuber ChrisBased97 uploaded a montage of clips from the Pokemon animated series titled "Amourshipping Moments Part 1" (shown below, right). Over the next year, the video received more than 2.2 million views respectively.

Kissing Scene

On October 27th, 2016, the final episode of Pokémon: XY&Z was broadcast, in which Serena runs up an escalator to say goodbye to Ketchum at the end of the show (shown below). When the scene cuts to a shot of the two character's feet, many speculated that Serena kisses Ash.

Following the episode, many GIFs and image macros of the scene were posted on Tumblr (shown below).^[7][8][9]

Various Examples

As of November 2016, there are more than 31,800 search results on Instagram^[4] and 2,900 on DeviantArt^[5] under the tag #amourshipping.

Search Interest

External References